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Geocaching: High-tech treasure hunting catches fire

Regional parks offer prime locations for growing family sport

It’s been called “high-tech treasure hunting.”

That pretty well sums up geocaching, a new recreational phenomena that’s spreading across the country and around the world.

“It’s a lot of fun and a really good challenge for people of all ages,” said Jan Youngquist, a parks planner with the Metropolitan Council and herself a newly minted geocacher. “It’s easy to learn, and a great year-around family activity that younger kids can enjoy.

“It gets you outdoors and into new parks you never saw before – even in your own neighborhood – and into the deeper parts of parks that you wouldn’t ordinarily see.” Youngquist said. “There are even caches in downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul.”

Sport relies (for most people) on GPS technology

Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is an outdoor adventure game in which participants use a new high tech, portable hand-held GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver to find small caches hidden on public lands.

Caches are placed by other GPS enthusiasts and their exact location posted online. Caches themselves are usually waterproof containers filled with small treasures and a logbook. When visitors find the cache, they may take or leave a small object and sign the logbook.

St. Paul resident Eric Celeste and his son Nathaniel said they are hooked on geocaching after just one experience in August. They were introduced to the sport by Nathaniel’s fourth-grade teacher at Harambee Elementary School for a field trip to Fort Snelling State Park in Minneapolis.

“Everybody loved having a mission, and all the kids ran ahead looking for the next link in the geocaching trail,” Celeste said. “The kids would read off the ‘waypoints,’ which are the geographical coordinates of latitude and longitude, moving us toward the cache. It made our walk on Pike Island more fun, more of a mission, and added an element of mystery, a spy story, to the day.”

Eleven-year-old Nathaniel Celeste agreed. “I thought it was really cool tracking down the cache. It was both a challenge and it was fun. Would I do it again? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Geocaching is in its first decade

Though GPS technology is much older, geocaching as a recreational sport is about 10 years old. It really started in 1999 after the U.S. government relaxed restrictions on using GPS satellites, which until then were used mostly for military, aeronautics and telecommunications purposes.

The first portable GPS receivers were only accurate to an area of about 40 square feet. Today’s devices, ranging in price from about $90 to more than $900, are usually accurate to within a few square feet or better. More expensive units have more features and better accuracy. The new iPhone 3G has built-in GPS technology and can access satellite imagery for every cache across the country.

Eric Zierdt, St. Paul, said the public interest in caching is exploding in Minnesota, across the country, and around the world. He said there are more than 600,000 caches in the world today – twice as many as a few years ago – and 2,000 in the seven-county Twin Cities metro area and hundreds more statewide.

With 1,500 caches placed to date, a Minnesota man who goes by the online name King Boreas, is the “number one hider” of geocaches in the world, Zierdt said. Zierdt himself has personally located more than 1,000 caches.

“The thrill is in the hunt, and it’s fun to challenge yourself – both as a finder and as a placer of caches,” said Zierdt. “People get very creative hiding these things, and that ups the ante for more experienced cachers. Each cache is different – some as small as a pencil eraser and as large as a 40-pound canister that is camouflaged to look like a log.”

Geocache enthusiasts have formed a community

Zierdt is treasurer of the Minnesota Geocacher’s Association (MnGCA), a loosely knit group of enthusiasts with about 500 members (and growing fast). Members share comments on an MnGCA forum about their coolest finds or toughest finds, and meet for weekly hunts, followed by networking and socializing at sites across the region and the state.

Zierdt said he’s found caches in dozens of city and county parks, as well as Lake Elmo Regional Park, Baylor Regional Park, Cottage Grove Ravine Regional Park and others. “It’s fun to see how someone else has hidden the cache, whether in a tree, in a rock wall or under a waterfall. It helps to develop a ‘geo-sense’ so you notice an unusual pile of sticks or other kinds of beacons. There’s no end to the fun of it.”

Vague interest grew to passion

Although it’s relative easy to learn to find hidden treasures using GPS technology, the fun goes well beyond the hunt for the most passionate geocachers.

Joel Landsteiner, Minneapolis, said caching across the western United States and parts of Europe has taken him to places he never knew existed, and enriched his experience in the places he normally visits.

“When you're out caching you [often] end up finding interesting land formations or fascinating things about the history of a location,” he said. “There is a huge variety both in the types of caches you can find and in the places you find them, the difficulty, the terrain. While visiting the North Shore, you can find caches along the Superior Hiking Trail that will lead you up to gorgeous vistas that overlook miles of forests and the lake. There is no shortage of places to find geocaches.

“And even after you've found a geocache, you often end up going back to the more memorable places just for fun or to show friends or family,” Landsteiner said. “More often than not, the search isn't necessarily about the cache that you find, rather it’s the location that it takes you to, and the experience you had on the way.”